Industrial environments include automobile manufacturing factories, food processing plants, and microprocessor fabrication facilities. The typical industrial environment includes various machines, such as drives, pumps, motors, and robots. These machines continually produce data that indicates the current status of the machines, such as the machine's pressure, temperature, or speed.
The typical industrial environment also includes a Human-Machine Interface (HMI). The HMI receives and processes the status data from the machines to generate various graphical displays. The graphical displays indicate the current and historical status of the machines. For example, an HMI graphical display might indicate status metrics of a drive, the pressure of a pump, the speed of a motor, or the output of a robot. The HMI may also control the machines. For example, the HMI might update drive parameters, turn on a pump, speed-up a motor, or stop a robot.
Existing HMI systems often require a user to operate an HMI from a remote location, far away from the actual machine that the HMI is interfacing with and controlling. Even if the user can operate an HMI in close proximity to the machine being monitored or controlled, the HMI is typically a physical device that must be operated by physical touches provided by the user, often requiring the use of a mouse, keyboard, or similar input devices.